There has been an ever-increasing demand for an energy-efficient distillation device for obtaining purified distilled liquid from contaminated liquid or for separating the liquid and solid from a mixture thereof as such a device has wide applications in the water purification industry, toxic waste processing and other industries employing distillation process. In order to be an extremely energy-efficient device, firstly, the distillation device must operate at a temperature low enough to absorb the thermal energy from industrial waste heat, solar radiation, river or sea water, atmospheric air, etc. and, secondly, it must recycle the thermal energy at a very high regeneration ratio. The first requirement can be satisfied by operating a still wherein the evaporation takes place at an evacuated state whereby the liquid boils at a temperature significantly lower than the temperature at which heat transfer takes place from the thermal energy source to the still. The second requirement can be satisfied by condensing the vapor at a pressurized state in one of two parallel twin tubings wherein the evaporation takes place in the other tubing of the twin tubing whereby the latent heat released at a higher temperature in a pressurized condensation is directly recycled by heat conduction to promote the evacuated evaporation taking place at a lower temperature. It is well known that, once an evacuated state is established, it does not require any power to maintain the evacuated state. Consequently, a low pressure high volume blower or pump forcibly moving the vapor from the evaporation tubing of the twin tubing to the condensation tubing of the twin tubing is all that is required to construct a revolutionary new still that operates of a not-so-high/temperature thermal energy source and recycles the thermal energy involved in the evaporation-condensation process taking place therein.
The primary object of the present invention is to provide a distillation device that directly recycles the latent heat released by the condensing vapor to promote a further evaporation of raw fluid.
Another object is to provide a distillation device with twin tubings wherein the evaporation of the raw fluid takes place at an evacuated state in one tubing in the twin tubing and a condensation takes place at a pressurized state in the other tubing.
A further object is to provide a distillation device employing a low pressure-high volume blower or pump that forcibly moves the vapor from the evaporator tubings to the condenser tubing, which establishes an evacuated state in the evaporator tubing and a pressurized state in the condenser tubing.
Yet another object is to provide a distillation device that produces distilled water from sea water by using thermal energy extracted from the ambient sea water and recycling thereof.
Yet a further object is to provide a distillation device that operates on not-so-high temperature energy sources such as industrial waste heat, solar energy, etc.
These and other objects of the present invention will become clear as the description thereof proceeds.